Dow Marmur's article quotes Amir Gissin, Israel's consul in Toronto, who this month officially launched a $1-million 'rebranding' campaign called 'Brand Israel.' Marmur's article repeats the themes of this campaign, which seeks to shift focus away from the discriminatory policies of the Israeli state (which some, including Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu and former US President Jimmy Carter have likened to apartheid) and focus instead on 'the positives'.
For those who can remember the 1980s, many will find similarities in the attempts by the South African apartheid state to portray its racist settler regime as a 'marvel' of industry, science, technology, culture, the arts and more broadly 'civilization' in Africa. Such racist messaging is now being reproduced by the Israeli foreign ministry, trying to tout similar'miracles' - implicitly sending the message that Africans in the 1980s orArabs in the early 21st century are incapable of such contributions.
Israel is increasingly criticized not because of its existence as a "Jewish state" but because of the legislated discrimination it practices against the non-Jewish indigenous Palestinian population in order to maintain such an ethnocratic state. This means refusing to recognize the basic rights of at least 5-million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, denying Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip the fundamental right to self-determination (free from military occupation) and refusing to grant Palestinian citizens of Israel equal rights in the realms of property ownership, marriage rights and citizenship law. No amount of Israeli 'spin' or 'rebranding' can detract the world's attention away from such egregious violations of fundamental Palestinian human rights.
Kole Kilibarda
PhD student, York University
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